tired of individual drives - help a noob!

[dstep]

Hey guys, this is my first post. Thanks in advance for taking the time to read it. I am trying to figure out a new setup, and I am completely lost. I've never used FreeNAS, nor do I know linux, nor have I ever had a RAID before.

I freelance video edit, and I need to store lots of data. So, two years ago I ran out and bought:

a Norco 4020 case ( which holds 20 bays )
a Highpoint RocketRaid 2340 card (4 mini SAS that have cables for 16 drives)

I built a mid level system, it's a 2.2 core 2 dual, 4gb ram, and it runs windows 2000. The PSU is 1000watts, and I have a SSD for the OS drive.

Initially, I bought 12 Seagate 1.5TB drives, but only 4 are still working.
Then I ran out and bought 8 - 2TB hitachi drives, and they are all still awesome.

I don't use the RAID, I mounted the harddrives individually, and I mounted only half of them and numbered them 1-6, and I store and work with the data via ethernet on my home network (all gigabit).

Then, once a week, I add the other 6 harddrives and do a 1:1 copy from the disks in the system to the backup drives, remove them, and keep on going.

With that being said, and the fact that I need to be able to have more space, I am coming to you guys for some help. I understand the concepts behind RAID, but I hear some people talk about RAIDs as these things that don't really work all that well, and I can't lose any of this data. Other people talk about RAIDs being only decent with enterprise drives, and all mine are consumer. Then I have a few friends complain about these 3TB drives failing all the time. Then people say that the performance sucks. I figure the best people to ask are the people that actually have raid setups and hear the advice that they give.

I have two goals:
a single volume that will make life SO much easier.
some way to make sure that my data is safe.

My upgrade budget is about 1500 US. What are your suggestions?

 

[cyberjock]

Ok. I think FreeNAS is a good option for you. Here's my recommendation:

1. Read the manual.
2. Go over the presentation in my signature.
3. If it all makes sense to you and you feel comfortable enough to jump into this fun filled server party come back and give us a configuration of what you intend to use or buy in your server. We'll let you know if you are about to make any bad decisions.

The 2 big killers for noobs is buying hardware that isn't compatible and not actually understand what they're doing. It is imperative that you actually have a grasp on what you are doing. Not understanding what is going on can lead to bad decisions and lost data. That's why I recommend you read the manual and the presentation. If anything goes wrong 6 months+ from now you'll be expected to fix it on your own. Of course, you can ask for advice on the forum, but you'll be stuck doing all the work. If you don't understand what you are doing and you start doing the wrong thing you can make a bad situation MUCH worse.

With your budget and the hardware you have, I think it's very reasonable to build you a good server. When you come back please provide more details on your setup. In particular, your CPU model, motherboard model, etc.

If you read over the manual and presentation and you are totally lost and confused, you may not want to make the jump to FreeNAS. Remember that ultimately your data will rest on you understanding what is going on. If you don't feel comfortable enough with the terms zpool, vdev, etc. you should consider other options. You will almost certainly be uncomfortable with FreeNAS configurations and such and that is normal for a noob. If you are asking yourself what a vdev and zpool are you are probably in over your head. :P

My guess is you'll need to buy more RAM, a USB stick unless you want to use your SSD for a boot device, and hard drives if the ones you have aren't enough storage. Highpoint controllers generally don't work too well on FreeNAS so if you are wanting to use more hard drives than your motherboard can handle you will need to consider another hard drive controller or RAID controller that can be flashed to IT mode.

If you live in the USA send me a PM.

 

[dstep]

Thanks noobsauce!

Woot! Manual read. As well as a couple dozen other posts on the forum. The vdev, and zpool make good sense, however, I am hoping that ZIL and L2ARC, which I don't feel that comfortable with, are just options.

CPU is an Intel E2180. So, 2.00ghz, I was slightly wrong. I had a little surprise, finding that the RAM is only 1GB. I must have stolen some at some point in time for another project...

As for the motherboard, it will have to go. It's a biostar, and tbh, I hate it.

I was thinking about a RAIDZ2, I like the idea of having two drives extra for parity just in case something happens.

So, my buy list:

RAM - Going to go for probably 6GB in this system, based on forum recommendations
Dedicated UPS system - based on my very rudimentary knowledge of ZIL and L2ARC, this should fix any issues as a result of power.
2x Intel RAID Cards (SASUC81) (but, i'm not opposed to any other suggestion)

For the motherboard/CPU... I am lost again. I found a recommended hardware post, and I was really hoping to go gigabyte, however all the gigabyte recommendations are out of stock/deactivated at newegg.

I want to make sure that this system is fast enough to saturate gigabit ethernet.

I am still debating configurations too: Should I keep adding the hitachi 2TB drives, or should I start buying 3TB drives?

Anyways, thanks again noobsauce!

 

[Stephens]

- I'm not sure how many drives/how much storage will end up in your ZPOOL, but the rule of thumb is 1GB RAM per 1TB of storage for ZFS (especially RAIDZ2). I do recommend RAIDZ2.

- Get the right kind of UPS for your system. If you have an active PFC power supply, you'll need to get an "PFC compatible" (sine wave) UPS, Test it when you get it by unplugging it from the wall to see if your NAS has an orderly shutdown. I'm on 8.0.4-p2-x64 and mine doesn't. Look at the UPS compatibility list for FreeBSD. If you get something not on the list, you'll have to play and hope.

- Out of curiosity, why are you buying RAID cards? ZFS will handle the RAID. All you need is enough SATA3 connections for the number of drives you'll have.

- 3TB drives are slightly less reliable than 2TB ones, but having RAIDZ2 will help with that. I'm planning to build at least one NAS with 6x3TB drives. Make sure your BIOS and/or any expansion cards can handle them.

 

[dstep]

Ok, so lots of RAM then. But how far should I take it? I am hoping to be able to scale this box to the mid 30TB mark. But, would the difference between 8 and 16 and 32GB of RAM really make that much of a difference?

Thanks for the heads up on the PSU / UPS suggestion. I will read up on that a bit more, and probably do some testing too :)

And the RAID cards... well, I don't really know. I was just listing them because people have said to ditch the Highpoint 2340 (which has 16 ports), and those looked decent and cheap and each one will give me 8 SATA ports, and I will snag a motherboard that can handle the remaining drives onboard. I know that you don't have to use any of the highpoint RAID, as that is how I have things set up now. Each drive is individual, basically it is an overpriced controller. Thus, I would have to assume that the only reason I should not use it is because it is not supported as well as other cards...?

 

[Stephens]

Regarding RAM: http://www.freenas.org/images/resou...s8.2_guide.html#__RefHeading__7608_1957652121

Regarding RAID card: I think folks around here refer to them as HBA's (Host Bus Adapters). If you need to get a RAID card and use it in non-raid (JBOD... Just a Bunch of Drives) mode, so be it. I really just wanted to point out if you can get a cheaper non-RAID card that just gives you additional SATA(3) ports, there's no reason I can see not to.

 

[cyberjock]

I sent you a PM.